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In this Devblog 3xited (aka Exi) will explain the experience revamp that will be implemented in WAKFU. Why this revamp? How does it work? What purpose does it serve? Find all the answers here!

You probably thought that it was only a matter of changing a few experience values for each level, and that’s it. You’ll understand that this matter is much much more complicated!

First: Why the change?

Playing time

The playing time needed to reach the last levels currently in-game was just too high.

Levels 120/130 represented an acceptable time investment to reach “end-game” content, but level 140 was just another story. Also, WAKFU will keep evolving while higher levels unlock, and it quickly became clear that the experience curve would have to be reviewed to adapt to these higher levels.

The experience needed for each level was sometimes increased arbitrarily, especially after level 110. In the long run we don’t want experience to increase that quickly and so early in the character progression.

Calculating experience

The formula used to calculate experience given by monsters was becoming more and more obsolete the higher level you reached. This forced us to always use higher and higher coefficients on monsters XP. In other words, we had to craft our experience curve manually and define the experience gain case by case.

For example, the last families of Wabbit Island had coefficients of 10 while Northern Chafers had a coefficient of 5.

There was also an anomaly that could limit group experience: while a group of 6 with level 120+ could get 3.5 times more experience than in solo, a same group with level 70- could get 6 to 10 times more! At these levels it was simply not interesting at all to play solo, making it much harder for new players without a full group.

Overall the group experience was only interesting if you fought in teams of 6 characters.

Leveling coherency

Areas

For a precise level, the best area to go XP was not always guided enough.

WAKFU is meant to give you as much freedom as possible, but we still have to preserve a degree of coherence and reward players that will fight monsters of their levels. We cannot allow players to gain too much experience by one-shooting monsters that are half their level, without any form of difficulty.

For example, a character level 125 was still able to XP correctly in the Sadida Kingdom, despite the area being level 60 to 70. We don’t want it to give no gain at all, but it should clearly be less interesting than other more adapted areas.

Power leveling

On the other hand, we also want to reduce the effects of power leveling. We still want to allow heterogenic groups to play together, but we don’t want a level 20 to just stick around a level 140 XPing in an area level 130+.

A player starting from scratch with a new character will have to explore and rediscover the low level areas. His level 140 friend will still be able to help him with content adapted to the low level character.

Finally, while Wisdom is an interesting stat, it loses any purpose when being maxed at the cost of other stats, creating characters that only seek experience and offer no help in combats.

New system

Experience given by a monster

We began by reevaluating the experience provided by the monsters. We tried to keep the new values as close as possible from the old ones to preserve the overall scale and keep it intuitive compared to what you’re already used to.

Monsters XP per level

In green, the new curve; in red, the old one

Experience received by a player

At the end of the fight, the experience given to the player can be modified by several factors (Note that Sidekicks count as a normal character in this system):

Average level of the monsters

The difference between your level and the average level of the monsters fought.

A character will gain 100% XP if he fights a monster with a level difference of 10 maximum. It will then lower progressively to offer an acceptable range of monsters to fight.

Monsters are too hard

This extreme is reached when the monster has 70 levels more than the player. Passed this level, the player will not gain any XP.

Monsters are too easy

This extreme is reached when the monster has 80 levels less than the player. Below this level, the player will only get 30% of the XP of this monster. It’s the minimum value, to make sure that you will never get no experience from low level monsters.

With this system, it can still be quite efficient to fight monsters with 40 levels difference.

Amount of opponents

The difference between the amount of fighters in your group, and the opposing group.

More Enemies

When enemies outnumber you, each additional enemy only provides 50% of its XP.For example:

1 player fighting 2 monsters will get 150% of the experience of a combat versus one monster. ((2-1 * 50% / 1 = 50%)

Being outnumbered is therefore rewarded without being a complete must, taking the duration of the fight into consideration.

More allies

When your group outnumbers the opponent, each additional character reduces the experience received.

The characters will already get less experience because there are less monsters, but this penalty is implemented to make sure that fighting 6 times 1 monsters does not become more interesting than fighting one time 6 monsters with a group of 6.

Level of the character

The difference between your level and the average level of the group. Irrelevant when you fight in a group of your level, it can have an impact when characters are way below the average level: they will not help in the fight in any way.

Bosses

Combats versus bosses are treated differently. When calculating the experience awarded, you will always be considered as having fought a group of your size. The only penalty that will apply will come with the level of the monsters.

For example, Bosses such as the Nun or Gobby Bulga will now provide respectable experience.

Group Bonus

We also decided to modify the group bonus to better meet our expectations:

Characters

1

2

3

4

5

6

New Bonus

+0%

+50%

+100%

+175%

+210%

+250%

Old Bonus

+0%

+20%

+50%

+100%

+160%

+250%

The maximum bonus with 6 characters hasn’t changed: *3.5.

The intermediary bonuses have however been changed to ensure that inviting a new player to the group should always be more beneficial to the group.

The most optimized group to get fast experience should no longer be only 6 members, but 4 to 6 members. Characters with a level lower than a third of the highest level of the group will not count for this bonus.

Group composition

Note also that to allow everyone to find groups of monsters matching their needs, we have modified the spawning proportions of each.

In ecosystems divided in two sub-areas, you’ll find:

Amount of monsters

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Proportion

10%

17%

17%

17%

17%

17%

5%

Groups of 7 monsters will now appear outside dungeons, with a lower rate than others.

Groups with more than 6 monsters will be considered as having 6 monsters in the count of opponents.

Combat penalty

First, you will no longer have to cast a spell to gain experience for the fight.

Also, penalty in case of death was too limiting and generated complicated situations. For example, it was often not interesting to sacrifice yourself for an ally, or take too much risk for him. Similarly, resurrection abilities were just a necessity to avoid anyone being left aside in terms of reward. Overall, it was just too frustrating to not receive experience and loots for helping your team win a fight by sacrificing yourself.

Experience needed per level

In green, the new curve; in red, the old one

Total experience per levelIn green, the new curve; in red, the old one

Secondary characters

Important note: this feature will not be implemented with this update, but should come with the next one.

The second highest level character of your account will now gain twice more experience until catching up with the number one. The third highest level character will gain three times more experience, until catching up with the second, and then twice more until catching up with the first. And so on for all your characters.

XP Curve

Once all these factors have been designed, an experience curve can be generated by taking a theoretical amount of combats per level, allowing us to deduce the time needed to reach this or that level. For example, reaching level 100 requires the same experience as before, while reaching level 140 now requires 3 billion XP instead of 5.2 billion. This is still a big value, but much more accessible.

Challenges

To finish, another significant modification: the challenge system. We implemented the challenge system in combat to make them more dynamic and better reward risky behavior and investment during the fight. All monsters of the game will offer one challenge while dungeon combats will offer two challenges.

Wisdom and Prospecting limitation

To accentuate the game in this direction, we also decided to limit the maximum experience gain bonus to +150%. This includes Wisdom of the characters with equipment, consumables, other temporary or permanent bonuses and challenges bonuses. To be more concrete, you will now get to choose between equipping yourself with Wisdom items and ignore the challenges or, on the contrary, optimize your equipment for the fight, and try to accomplish the challenges to get similar bonuses.

As a result of this change, Apprentice, Initiate and Sage sets that were all implemented to help you until the revamp of the experience system will now be modified to better fit the new Wisdom cap and other in-game Wisdom equipment.

The second highest level character of your account will now gain twice more experience until catching up with the number one. The third highest level character will gain three times more experience, until catching up with the second, and then twice more until catching up with the first. And so on for all your characters.

This is amazing. A system imported from Dofus that has been mentioned on these forums a few times and one of the best systems possible for letting players experiment with new characters on the same account.

Not entirely sure if i'm thrilled with how exp is gained via mobs. It all sounds nice, but from how it went in beta, it was SUPER easy to fight a group and not receive any exp at all.. I hope that got fixed and that there isn't a limit on how big a group can be for rewards. (Even though that seems to be the case regarding Powerleveling)

The second highest level character of your account will now gain twice more experience until catching up with the number one. The third highest level character will gain three times more experience, until catching up with the second, and then twice more until catching up with the first. And so on for all your characters.

This is amazing. A system imported from Dofus that has been mentioned on these forums a few times and one of the best systems possible for letting players experiment with new characters on the same account.

Also almost half the experience needed to get to 140 now.

I'm thrilled.

• Mango

I completely agree. I have 3 level 100+ characters, but don't want to make any more because its such a time sink. It saddens me that this won't happen until the next update.

I am however curious about the xp changes. Specifically does fighting monsters who's group level is more then 3x your solo level still give you little to no xp? Because right now if one level 90 character fights a group of 6 level 100 monsters and wins, they get nothing for their amazing feat.

I completely agree. I have 3 level 100+ characters, but don't want to make any more because its such a time sink. It saddens me that this won't happen until the next update.

I am however curious about the xp changes. Specifically does fighting monsters who's group level is more then 3x your solo level still give you little to no xp? Because right now if one level 90 character fights a group of 6 level 100 monsters and wins, they get nothing for their amazing feat.

I am however curious about the xp changes. Specifically does fighting monsters who's group level is more then 3x your solo level still give you little to no xp? Because right now if one level 90 character fights a group of 6 level 100 monsters and wins, they get nothing for their amazing feat.

Yes, since you'll be outnumbered, you will get 3.5x more XP than soloing a single level 100 Monster.

In such scenario, you'll get over 10% of your level by winning this fight (without Wisdom bonuses).

"As a result of this change, Apprentice, Initiate and Sage sets that were all implemented to help you until the revamp of the experience system will now be modified to better fit the new Wisdom cap and other in-game Wisdom equipment."

What? These items were implemented "to help you until the revamp"??? (have you seen the ingredients to these "temporary" wisdom solutions? I must not have gotten the memo that these are just temporary high wisdom items; "to be changed later") I'm sure my Sage, Apprentice, and Initiate wisdom sets that I worked really hard to get... will be "modified" to have horrible wisdom now.

You got to be friggin' kidding me with the wisdom sets. Do you have any idea how many ressources went into crafting those? And now in typical Ankama manner you will just nerf the living hell out of them and gg a month of work wasted for nothing.

You guys have to have the worst planning skills in the entire game development community. How can you seriously offer such expensive sets and then right after people finished them you srcew everyone over?

I mean seriously you revamped ALL equipment 1 month ago to have a final balancing system in place so nothing has to be ever changed anymore. And ONE MONTH later you announce you thave to remodel all the important stuff in game once more? Unbelievable...

If I had not decided to not sub again anymore, this would have certainly done the trick. But I guess with your upcoming p2w model you will offer better wisdom gear in the yet to be announced all new cash shop too.

All the latest development jokes and mistakes deserve to be made public to a majority of your focus group so that nobody makes the mistake of every trying this game.

Absolutely aweful handle on....well on everything. If you were a company that sold cars or anything like that your customers would have burned down your stores already.

Oh, ok well. That's a little better then. I saw that 150% sitting there all by itself and cocked a floop.

Thanks for correcting me Mr Troyle

This is beautiful, thank you a thousand times for this. Almost makes up for trolling your playerbase with with the sage and such sets.

Quote

Combat penalty

First, you will no longer have to cast a spell to gain experience for the fight.

Also, penalty in case of death was too limiting and generated complicated situations. For example, it was often not interesting to sacrifice yourself for an ally, or take too much risk for him. Similarly, resurrection abilities were just a necessity to avoid anyone being left aside in terms of reward. Overall, it was just too frustrating to not receive experience and loots for helping your team win a fight by sacrificing yourself.

This post has been edited by TommyTrouble - December 04, 2013, 17:38:54.

Could we get exact changes on the Apprentice, Initiate and sage sets? A lot of people have put in a lot of time for these sets and would hate to see a nerf to them (which sounds like will happen). Will there be a buff to other stats if the wisdom is nerfed? Would only seem logical to buff the other stats if wisdom is nerfed.

The second highest level character of your account will now gain twice more experience until catching up with the number one. The third highest level character will gain three times more experience, until catching up with the second, and then twice more until catching up with the first. And so on for all your characters.

Finally, the system from Dofus! I was waiting for it since... forever! Thank you!

Not being required to cast a spell to receive exp is a welcome change.

Still receiving exp and items after death is the right way to go as well.

New exp curve reduces the total exp to hit 140 by 42% is much better.

My only concern is the distribution of monsters. Finding the right group to fight that will give you near optimal exp is a pain in the a$$. I also hate the Trapper profession. I'd love to see something done to smooth this part of the game out.

My suggestion: Represent each monster group on the map by only one sprite.When combat is initiated, the number of monsters is determined by the number of players. Having the party leader manually set the number of monsters the group is after would be even better. As it would allow a solo player to fight the maximum number of low level monsters if desired. Farming materials etc.

Not knowing the exact type of monsters in a group shouldn't be an issue. It could stay random the same way it is now. Players will quickly know the possible encounters to expect after a few combats. The type of monster family players will fight is simply represented by the Area they are in. The sprite can be a random mob within that group to give a visual.